1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus which performs communication with an external apparatus connected through a network. Particularly, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus which stores communication packets transmitted or received between the information processing apparatus and an external apparatus in a case where it is determined that communication between the information processing apparatus and the external apparatus has not properly been performed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, information processing systems for receiving electronic data from an external apparatus through a network and processing the electronic data have grown popular. Many of these information processing systems adopt the TCP/IP in a network.
In such a TCP/IP-based network, in order to provide users with high-quality communication, it is important to analyze communication environment, specify causes of communication failure, for example, a low throughput, and take steps for improvement, for example, building more communication lines. In order to analyze communication environment, for instance, communication packets transmitted or received between terminals may be stored as log data as needed. With the use of the log data stored in this manner, communication environment, for example, traffic volume for each line and user, a rate of retransmission and so forth, is analyzed and a cause of communication failure can be specified. Furthermore, the bottleneck place can be specified by using MIB information of a router and packet information.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-164890 proposes a diagnosis apparatus, which extracts a diagnosis-target flow satisfying a predetermined condition, and diagnoses communication environment based on the network configuration and statistic data related to the traffic in the communication line for each application.
However, in the aforementioned conventional art, all communication packets transmitted or received between an information processing system and an external apparatus must be stored. This is causing a problem of time-consuming analysis of a communication environment. In particular, in a case where a service person visits a customer to collect communication packets, this problem causes reduced work efficiency of the service person. Instead of a service person visiting a customer to collect communication packets, it is possible to consider a mechanism in which an information processing system automatically collects communication packets and keeps them in storage. However, this also causes a problem because it is necessary to provide a memory source for storing a large amount of communication packets.
Furthermore, in the diagnosis apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-164890, communication packets are monitored for a long period of time to accumulate statistic data, and communication environment is automatically diagnosed for each host unit or application program based on the accumulated statistic data. However, according to the method disclosed in No. 2002-164890, an analysis of the communication environment is not performed based on the stored communication packets, but based on statistic information which is produced based on header information of the communication packets. Therefore, if statistic data is to be stored in addition to communication packets, the above-described problem will also arise.